Portrait of an Old Man and his Grandson

The old man's love for the boy on his knee is the whole subject of the painting — but Ghirlandaio painted his nose exactly as it was: swollen, misshapen, marked by the advanced-stage rosacea called rhinophyma. It's one of the earliest clinically accurate depictions of the disease in Western art. Dermatologists still use it in teaching. Ghirlandaio didn't idealise. The child looks up anyway. Now at Musée du Louvre, Paris @museelouvre